TOP OBAMA FUNDRAISER OK'ED SOLYNDRA LOAN
Who arranged the Solyndra loan? A top Obama fund raiser named Steven J. Spinner who, according to ABC, worked to “pick and select fantastic projects” for DOE to fund. During the campaign, he was responsible for raising at least half a million dollars for Obama. Now, he told associates that he “helped oversee the more than $100 billion of loan guarantee and direct lending authority” for DOE’s green-energy lending program.
And what a coincidence! Spinner’s wife, Allison’s law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati got $2.4 million in legal fees to handle the legal work in connection with the Solyndra loan.
The fact is that the Solyndra scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. Much of the DOE green energy lending program is a scam. It is a slush fund of pork for paying back campaign contributors. Top Obama bundler George Kaiser was the chief investor in Solyndra.
The Democrats are digging in to continue the lending program because the firms that have already gotten loans can’t pay them back unless the welfare continues to flow. If it is shut off, they risk having dozens of Solyndras to explain away, each with its own sordid history of campaign donations and special influence.
When the Republicans in the House demanded the termination of the $1.5 billion lending program to offset the extra money the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needed. The GOP conservatives did not want the FEMA money to add to the deficit. But the Senate is fighting like crazy against the cut, even going to the lengths of threatening a government shutdown over the issue. They need to keep the funding so the firms don’t embarrass them and add to the taxpayers’ losses.
The Solyndra scandal is a gift that keeps on giving. It shows that not only was Obama’s stimulus package and baloney about green jobs a fraud but that it was also good old Chicago politics at work.
And the entire concept of the loan program is bogus. How can you make an energy company that is not viable work by lending it money? If the program can generate energy at competitive prices, why would it need federal aid? And, if it can’t, how would it ever be able to repay the federal loan?
Indeed, giving a company a federal loan realistically precludes private financing unless the federal loan is subordinated to private financing in the loan agreement, an arrangement which – as it did in the case of Solyndra leads to the massive fleecing of the taxpayer.
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